Year 2000

Unitrode Statement

Regarding Year 2000 compliance of all manufactured products

Unitrode designs, manufactures and sells analog/linear and mixed-signal integrated circuits, modules, and non-volatile products, primarily for power management, portable power and electronic interface applications. A majority of the Company’s products contain no date logic and are therefore Year 2000 compliant by default. The only products with date logic are the Benchmarq-branded Real Time Clocks (RTC's) but these are fully Year 2000 compliant, and will continue to function correctly after the year 2000. However, the systems in which these RTC products are embedded should be checked to verify that those programs or equipment use the date codes correctly, and that those products themselves are Year 2000 compliant. For more details, refer to the RTC product information below.

Regarding the Benchmarq-Branded Real-Time Clock Operations for the Year 2000 and Leap-Year Adjustments

All of the Benchmarq-branded RTC products are covered by this statement including specifically the bq3285xx, bq3287xx, bq4285x, bq4287x, bq4822Y, bq4830Y, bq4832Y, bq4842Y, bq4845x, bq4847x, bq4850Y, and bq4852Y. All other Benchmarq-branded products such as the NVSRAM, charge-control, and gas-gauge products, do not utilize a real-time clock, and therefore are not affected by any Year 2000 issue.

Year 2000:
The Benchmarq-branded RTC devices do not have an additional century register because this register changes only once every 100 years. To make a system Year 2000 compliant, only the firmware accessing the clock must be changed. A 100-year calendar can easily be implemented in software and can be Year 2000 compatible. Typically, the 100-year calendar works by determining the number of years since a base year (1997 for example). If a year rollover occurs (year 99 to year 00), the software then modifies the century constant 19 to the century constant 20 for each year after the rollover up to the base year. For example, PCs built since 1987 and most embedded systems built in the last few years implement this procedure to make the systems Year 2000 compliant.

Leap year:
Leap year occurs during any year that is divisible by 4, except for centennial years unless it is divisible by 400. So 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, but 2000 is. Because Benchmarq-branded RTCs count only the last two digits of the year, there is no way to tell whether 00 is 1800, 1900, or 2000, but this is not a problem. In Benchmarq-branded RTCs, every year divisible by 4 is a leap year including 00. Therefore, proper leap-year adjustments will be made for the 21st century. Benchmarq-branded RTCs, however, will not handle Leap Year in the year 2100.

Any questions regarding these RTC products can be directed to:

David Heacock
Business Line Director, Portable Products
Unitrode Corporation
7 Continental Boulevard
Merrimack, NH 03054
Phone: (603) 429-8948
Fax: (603) 429-8771